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Comment by malfist | Hacker News Reader

It's a little rich to blame 18 year olds for college costs skyrocketing don't you think?

Of course students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs and research opportunities. But asking someone who might have been getting $5/week allowance to figure out how much a newer dorm is worth when the prices are in the 10s of thousands is an impossible task. They don't know how much money is worth.

And then to tell them that they can't discharge it in bankrupcy because they knew what they were getting into is very much bullshit.

And I don't say all this because I have student loans. I was very lucky, I went to a state college with a full tuition scholarship. But I've seen a lot of my peers struggle with student loans because teenagers don't understand fiscal policy, and shouldn't be expected too.

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The demand for top tier education drives prices, just like the financing structure for loans for that education drives prices. Excluding one or the other is a false choice. Maybe if risk of default were factored into loans that would change the trajectory of the tuition cost curve. But taking away agency the consumers in the model doesn't lead us to the insights we need to actually fix the underlying problem.

I have a vested interest in this problem. But saying popular things for upvotes isn't going to change the underlying problem of how to allocate scarce resources.

I disagree with you on "teenagers don't understand fiscal policy, and shouldn't be expected too.". This isn't fiscal policy. This is a pretty straightforward introduction to being an adult and budgeting. I went through it, too. A mortagage was harder and more daunting. Rental terms on apartments were more predatory. The fact that people even discuss bankruptcy to discharge student loan debt is a horrible sign, given how much of ones' life potential one i throwing away to recover prime loan eligibility.

Also, "And then to tell them that they can't discharge it in bankrupcy because they knew what they were getting into is very much bullshit." - what part of where I wrote, "The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad" is unclear?

I'm not trying to make it black-and-white, there's certainly some degree of personal choice weighing in here - but it's not the core issue and it's probably a distraction. When we realized cigarettes were bad it was partially about informing people, but the main thing was to change marketing laws so you could make sure that wasn't undoing all the good info.

If I give you two loan options with bad terms and you have to choose one, then that is a fiscal policy thing and your choice is ultimately pretty inconsequential. You may be slightly better off than the person who made the other choice but the bad policy is affecting both of you.

Ultimately it's both a policy and a personal choice thing, but as with most society-wide issues the personal choice aspect falls away pretty quickly and we need to get realistic and figure out what a solution is instead of just blaming individuals.

It's a simple economic argument. If students care only about quality, Universities will only care about it also. And improving quality leads to higher price.

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